Tuesday, January 20, 2009

24 Plot Prognostication: Noon to 1pm

The following will happen between noon and 1pm:

When we last saw Jack, the Prime Minister of Sengala had just been spirited into his safe room, to evade pursuit by Emerson's team of rouge mercenaries hell bent on enriching themselves while destroying Western Civilization. Using a 6 iron cast from 40/10 steel grabbed from a golf bag lying nearby, Jack was futilely clawing at the safe room, attempting to gain entry.

When the hour begins, Jack will have found the room's ventilation duct. Emerson instructs his agents to remove the duct, and begin farting into register so as to smoke the Prime Minister and his wife from the room. She goes comatose, the Prime Minister relents, and the two are captured.

Jacqueline Bowers, who had tortured Sniper Tanner to learn of this plot against the Prime Minister, arrives too late to stop the kidnapping, but not too late to make eye contact with Jack Bauer. She is red-headed livid, if you catch my drift. Jack finds this very appealing, and using just his eyes and a penetrating gaze, explains that there isn't enough time to fully explain that he is not, in fact, a bad guy. She is unconvinced, but also inexplicably experiences a deep rooted sexual stirring which she mistakes for an urge to torture someone, so runs back to the hospital to nail Sniper Tanner again.

President Taylor finds herself in a horrible conundrum. She's been frustrated all morning by the fact that the government IT department refuses to allow that a simple way exists to construct a new firewall against the terrorists. Then she gets really mad when she calls them at noon, only to find out they've all gone to lunch and won't be back for the hour.

She then has her 37th argument with Ethan Kanin, her Chief of Staff, about whether it would be better to allow innocent Americans die, or innocent trible Africans in some out of the way 3rd world emirate that nobody has ever heard of before. Kanin, brilliantly, continues his Socratic approach to helping her work through this problem. Sure, Kanin seems like the evil insider, but that is a bit too obvious at this early hour. Our projection algorithm is uncertain on this point.

First Ladyman Henry Taylor continues his free fall into madness. It finally becomes clear that his quest to find the murderer of his some is but a stylistic metaphor representing his lost car keys.

Saving our most remarkable projections for last, we have calculated with 97.373602% certainty that A) Jack will not torture anyone in this episode, even benevolently, and B) the bumbling Agent/Director Moss will still not be fired from his position for botching absolutely everything about this investigation.